


Cuffs and Alleys

by eleanor_lavish, thepsychicclam



Series: Valiant Effort [9]
Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-18
Updated: 2009-07-18
Packaged: 2017-11-28 03:41:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/669866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleanor_lavish/pseuds/eleanor_lavish, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepsychicclam/pseuds/thepsychicclam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A glimpse into Dom's past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cuffs and Alleys

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING! It’s pretty dark, people. Angsty, non-con sex sort of dark.
> 
> Written by EL.

Dom was never what one would call a style maven.

He left the looking good to Orlando, who managed to take clothes from doorknobs, crumpled heaps, and Dom’s closet and end up looking like the cover boy for a ‘grunge-chic’ spread. It was mostly the relaxed way he carried his lanky frame, but Dom like to blame Orli’s cheekbones. Try as might, Orli (to his frustration) was always fighting the misconception that he was _posing_ as a punk—that next month he would abandon the castoff jeans and his ripped up army jacket in favor of the Next Big Look.

Dom’s style, like the original UK punks, stemmed from necessity. His scuffed boots, ripped cargo pants, and shirts held together with safety pins were the ones he had grown accustomed to as a kid. His parents were good people who worked hard, but Dom was born into a working class family that was perpetually out of work. They were displaced Irish Catholics, Dom’s da having moved to Halbershire in the early seventies to find work in the factories as a machinist.

But the factories shut down soon after Dom was born, and the Monaghans kept moving. They hit at least half a dozen towns in the UK before Dom was six. By that time, he was used to living in close quarters with his parents and brother. They shared clothes and beds and air space and Dom learned early on that he couldn’t always have what he wanted. New clothes were a luxury, and Dom got used to hand-me-downs and church charities. His parents tried to teach him the difference between charity and necessity, but he could see the shame in his father’s eyes every time they were forced to visit a food pantry or ask for winter boots.

The happiest Dom can remember being was the years he spent in Germany when his father lucked into a job with BMW. They lived there for seven years in an apartment with three whole bedrooms, and had Christmas feasts and new boots every winter. Dom took no time picking up the language, and was soon the class clown even in German.

But the plant closed, and when he moved back to Manchester at thirteen, Dom found his clothes, so new and luxurious in Germany, were not only the ones he was going to be stuck with until they fell apart, but they were horribly out of fashion among his new classmates.

It wasn’t long before they were full of patches and bloodstains.

Dom still has a few of those shirts—not that they fit very well. They serve as his constant reminder of why people, in general, aren’t worth Dom’s time.

It was about this time Dom found the library and immersed himself in all its wonders. The library was warm and free, and the woman at the front desk called him ‘dearie’. He started reading mysteries and thrillers, moved on to Westerns, and biographies. At fifteen, he found a list of “The 100 Most Influential Pieces of Literature Ever Written” in the London Sunday Times, and promised himself he would read them all before he died. At twenty-six, he was on number 63, _The Brothers Karamazov_.

It was around number 14 ( _Henry V_ ), that Dom discovered the joys of live theater. The local college was doing a production of the play, and Dom asked his mother if they could get a few tickets. There was only money enough for one, he was told, and so Dom went alone and sat in the back, hunched in his seat, making himself as small as possible. The production certainly didn’t rank among the top ever done. In fact, looking back, Dom’s pretty sure it was awful. But he was hooked. He wanted to do _that_. When he got home and announced to his parents that Dominic Monaghan was going to be an Actor, they smiled indulgently and told him to finish his homework. But when he begged for admittance to a selective arts school, the Monaghans simply couldn’t afford it. Dom’s father felt so guilty, he bought his son a beat-up used bass guitar at the pawnshop. “Here son,” he said. “If you’re worried about getting girls, this should help.”

Looking back, Dom thinks this was a pretty fortuitous event. But he was still pretty disappointed.

 

Dom met Orlando in a community theater production of _Much Ado About Nothing_. Dom loved losing himself in the plays they did. The world was smaller and more manageable in play form, and he was able to mold it, shape it into something good or honest or tragic. Something he could understand, something to which he could understand his own reaction.

While Orlando loved the grandeur of Shakespeare and the wit of Wilde, Dom had always preferred Ibsen and Chekhov and O’Neill. He liked roles where he could be small and dark and angry. In his real life, no one saw Dom as any of those things, except perhaps small. To the world, he was a clown, a jester, a carefree spirit.

This was when Dom thought Orlando’s life was perfect—his looks were perfect, his accent was perfect, his pedigree… this was before Dom met Orli’s pedigree and hated them. Before he knew that Orli’s dark side was buried almost as deeply as his.

Dom thought too hard and knew too much and felt too deeply to be a real jester. The small, dark parts of him began to come alive more and more, increasing with every kick to his ribs on a schoolyard, every jab yelled by rich boys as they drove past in new cars, ever tear his mother shed over what she couldn’t give her boys. In his teenage years, Dom fell victim to the Angry Young Man syndrome. He felt trapped by his own downtrodden existence. If Dom had been aware of what was happening, had he watched himself from the outside, he would have laughed, and kicked himself in the arse for being so damned predictable.

But Dom at sixteen didn’t see the humor. All he felt was rage and fear and desperation. That’s when he got his first tattoo. The pain was perfect, channeling how he felt about the world into rivulets of ink and tiny beads of blood shining on the surface of his skin. When he walked away from the parlor, he felt purged, purified.

When Dom thinks about those years now, he unconsciously runs his fingers over the leather covering his wrists. His cuffs are part of him now-- he has nearly a dozen, but mostly wears the same three every day. No one much notices them anymore, even the bondage crowd who can sense, cuffs aside, that Dom would more than live up to his name. They could just be a fashion statement, and Dom is content to let everyone think just that.

But when Dom closes his eyes sometimes, he can still picture his wrists wrapped not in bands of brown and black, but of shining silver. The real reason he feels naked without them. The real reason he doesn’t even take them off when he sleeps. Especially when he sleeps.

 

_”Hey, Orlando! Dress rehearsal’s almost over, mate. Wanna go catch some footie down at McGinney’s?”_

Orlando was not a Man U fan, but Dom was trying to convert him.

_”Sorry man, I’ve got a date.”_

Orlando was very popular. Dom could understand why.

_”Please just tell me it’s not with Meredith Solburn. She’s might be stacked, but she’s dumb as a fucking post.”_

Orlando was blushing, which he didn’t do often.

_“It’s not Meredith Solburn.”_

Dom saw him look toward the stage door and catch the gaze of a pretty young man, maybe eighteen. Orli wouldn’t look Dom in the eye.

_”Oh. Right then. Have a good time!”_

Dom went to McGinney’s alone that night, and drank too much and rooted for his team. His mother worked nights at the plant these days and wouldn’t be home till after four. And his da spent most long nights in pubs himself.

Another lonely soul was in McGinney’s that night, and Dom only took notice because he looked so out of place. Tall and broad, with big hands. Not from the working families Dom knew in the neighborhood.

Andrew. That was his name. Two years above Dom in school, and a player on the football team. Good student. Fucking wanker.

Only that night, in McGinney’s, Andrew looked lost. Sad. Dom moved across the bar and sat next to him.

_Why the fuck had he done that?_

Andrew was already on his sixth ale of the night, maybe seventh, and he stumbled when he got up to go the toilet. Dom laughed and offered to give him a hand, seeing as they’d get thrown out of the pub if Andrew managed to piss on the floor.

They leaned on each other, giggling, Dom almost crushed by the weight of Andrew. They forgot about the bathroom in favor of the back alley, both needing relief from the cigar smoke and cheers of the footie crowd. Dom finished first, with a sigh of relief, and leaned back against the cool brick, watching Andrew with a sidelong glance as he finished his piss, his broad arm supporting him on the wall. Dom couldn’t stop his eyes from wandering down Andrew’s shoulder, to his waist, to his big hand gripping himself roughly as he finished. He was big, bigger than Dom, broad and cut.

_”Like what you see, mate?”_

Dom can still remember the feeling of blood rushing to his cheeks, blushing furiously at the sound of Andrew’s voice catching him.

_”Wanna touch it?”_

And Andrew reached out, drawing Dom’s hand to his dick, shuddering slightly as Dom closed his hand around it and ran his thumb from base to tip.

_”God, yeah… I fucking knew you’d be into this.”_

Andrew’s breathing shallowed and he moved slightly, placing Dom between himself and the wall. Dom could feel the heat in his hands, could feel Andrew getting hard at his touch, could feel himself hardening at the very idea that this was happening. He knew Orlando was gay, knew he was too, had been called a ‘fucking faggot’ for years, knew he fancied boys, the shape of them, the smell, but Dom had never touched a boy before, like this, never been this close…

_”Suck my cock…”_

Dom’s eyes went wide as Andrew removed his hand, and pushed lightly at his Dom’s shoulders, willing him to his knees.

_”No one will catch us, the game’s on…please.”_

And what could Dom say to ‘please’, and to a red, persistent cock inches from his face? He took Andrew into his mouth to a grateful moan, using his tongue to circle the shaft, trying to keep his crooked teeth out of the way.

He reached into his own trousers and began jerking himself harshly against his calloused fingers. Andrew sped up his thrusts into Dom’s mouth, and he felt himself about to gag and pulled back. Andrew grabbed roughly at the hair at the nape of Dom’s neck and held him in place, bucking hard, his cock scraping against the roof of Dom’s mouth. Dom tried to pull away but Andrew just held him tighter, tugging at his hair until stinging tears sprung to his eyes. He forgot about his own cock, now shrinking with fear.

Andrew stilled when he came in Dom’s mouth, and Dom choked and coughed and sputtered on the hot salty-sweet liquid, some escaping an running like molasses down his chin as Andrew finally released him and pulled away.

_”Andrew…”_

Dom’s ears rang loudly as Andrew’s knee hit him square in the jaw, slamming his skull into the brick behind his head.

_”You better forget you know my name, cocksucker, or I’ll make your life a living fucking hell.”_

Dom sat in the alley for a while after Andrew walked away, listening to the yells from inside as Man U scored a goal.

He got to his feet unsteadily, hands and knees shaking. He took two steps before he puked into the trashcan next to the door.

Dom’s flat was dark when he opened the door. His brother was off with friends for the weekend, and it was way before last call, so his da would be at one of a handful of pubs that still let him buy on credit.

Remnants of dinner his mother had made for herself before work lay in the sink—breadcrumbs, an errant piece of cheese, a sliver of fat from the ham. Dom reached into the sink and pulled out the knife lying there, still stained with juice from the ham and a bit of mustard. He held it tightly in his right hand, watching in horror as the blade got closer and closer to the skin on his left wrist.

_This is fucking stupid! You don’t kill yourself over a piece of trash like Andrew Fredricks._

But it took longer than expected for the message to reach Dom’s steady hand, and the blade nicked a sharp line in his flesh before Dom screamed and threw it across the room, embedding it in the wall next to his father’s bookcase.

The cut was harsh, but not deep, and he rinsed the blood off in the kitchen sink until the water ran clear, cursing himself and Andrew and his da for being a drunk and his ma for crying when she thought he couldn’t see and Orlando for being so fucking perfect and the world for not giving a shit about him.

He had a towel wrapped around his wrist as he walked past the knife in the wall, and he was scared out of his mind when he had to restrain his hand from reaching for it again.

Dom wasn’t suicidal. He was poor, and small, and battered and bruised, and a fag, but he wasn’t defeated yet.

But Dom didn’t trust his own hands to keep from doing him harm. So that night, he took silver duct tape from his father’s desk and wrapped it around his wrists. Layer after layer stuck to the skin, pulling at fine hairs and making him wince. But he would be safe from himself, at least for the night.

Dom couldn’t sleep for fear of never waking, so at one am, he pulled himself out of bed and reached for his latest book. But the book that week was Milton, _Paradise Lost_ , and Dom threw that across the room too.

Finally, desperate for diversion, Dom picked up the old bass from his da and plucked at the strings experimentally. The vibrations ran through his fingers, ran through the back of the guitar into his stomach, reverberated through his entire body. It shut out the voices in Dom’s head, especially the one that talked to his hands without permission. He played softly until he heard his mother’s key in the latch. Then he laid the bass against the bed, fingers still wrapped around the fret, and fell into dreamless sleep.

Dom bought his first leather cuff that weekend, in a side shop off Chelsea. He also bought a beginners book of guitar chords and simple melodies and began to practice with the bass every day after school. The buckle broke on that cuff three years later, in a fight with some punks in Glasgow. He keeps it with the lesson book in the bottom of his sock drawer.  



End file.
